from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

Chinese (Mandarin) xī chūn : xī, warm, sunny + chūn, springlike.

Examples

This consists of the young leaf buds just as they begin to unfold, and forms a fine and delicate kind of young hyson, which is held in high estimation by the natives, and is generally sent about in small quantities as presents to their friends.

Old ladies of family over their hyson, and grey-haired lairds over their punch, I had often heard utter a little harmless treason; while the former remembered having led down a dance with the Chevalier, and the latter recounted the feats they had performed at Preston, Clifton, and Falkirk.

“Really, madam, you must be aware that every volume of a narrative turns less and less interesting as the author draws to a conclusion, — just like your tea, which, though excellent hyson, is necessarily weaker and more insipid in the last cup.”

Having but an indifferent opinion of books ushered into existence by such charlatanical manoeuvres, we thought no more of Omoo, until, musing the other day over our matutinal hyson, the volume itself was laid before us, and we suddenly found ourselves in the entertaining society of Marquesan Melville, the phoenix of modern voyagers, sprung, it would seem, from the mingled ashes of Captain Cook and Robin Crusoe.

The waistcoat is of a material known only to themselves -- a sort of nightmare illusion of velvet, covered with a slight tracery of refined mortar, curiously picked out and guarded with a nondescript collection of the very greenest green pellets of hyson-bloom gunpowder tea.